"And when that home, or the wretched pretence of it, was broken up, you were thrown upon the mercy of the world," he questioned, "with no kindred, no friends to stretch out a helping hand?" "Our relatives had long before ceased to take any interest in the daughter of a ruined gambler. I was thrown, in a certain sense, on the mercy of the world. But for a small pittance, which my father could not deprive me of, I should have starved, for he left nothing behind him but debts." She was not, then, absolutely penniless. Something had been saved from the wreck. He wondered if Esmond knew this. And yet, if she told a comparative stranger this at their first real interview, she must have told him, who seemed to be on the footing of a friend of the house. "I had no real friends," she went on; "but in the course of a wandering life--when my father owed too much in one place he removed to another--I had picked up a few acquaintances. With these I made a home, on and off, for longer or shorter periods." "And you have come to anchor here with Mrs L'Estrange, who is your cousin, one of the few relatives who did not visit the sins of the fathers on the children." Her voice was a little scornful. "The cousinship is a very distant one. And, as she is an inveterate gambler herself, but more lucky than my father, she could hardly look upon gambling in another as a deadly sin." He nodded his head in agreement. He did not want to talk himself, for fear he should interrupt the flow of her reminiscences; she was evidently in a confidential mood this afternoon. "I saw her a few times when quite a child, and then she vanished like the others. A couple of years ago, we met in Devonshire at the house of a mutual acquaintance. She seemed to take a fancy to me. In the end, she proposed that I should, for the present, make my home with her. She has only one interest in life, _play_. She is a very lazy woman. She hates writing the briefest note, and housekeeping is abhorrent to her. I attend to her correspondence, I order the dinner and look after the servants. I am not exactly eating the bread of charity," she concluded with a little mirthless laugh, "because I give some work in exchange for my food. My own little pittance provides me with clothes." He wondered what the little pittance represented in annual hard cash. She was dressed quietly but in good taste, and he was judge enough of woman's apparel to know that the material of her dress was expensive. On her slender fingers glittered a few valuable rings, heirlooms probably saved from the clutches of the gambling father. She did not convey the impression of poverty, but perhaps she was clever, and knew how to make the best of a small income. There was a long silence, and it almost seemed as if she had forgotten his presence. For she sat with a musing look in her beautiful eyes, her thoughts evidently in the past, conjuring up Heaven knows how many painful memories.